Watch A Tesla With Autopilot 2.0 Self-Driving Hardware Demo

All new vehicles manufactured by Tesla eight cameras take spherical vision and twelve ultrasonic sensors, besides the traditional frontal radar. Add all this new set of sensors will make these new vehicles can be established as a fully autonomous cars when the software is ready. Will be the first vehicles in the so-called “Level 5” autonomous cars.

Level 5 is the theoretical maximum on the scale of autonomous vehicles, overcoming extreme adverse weather conditions in which qualified as “Level 4” cars would request that it take the human driver possession. The most complete new set of sensors, would make the new Tesla the first to reach this maximum level, which only need an address where to go, and the vehicle would do the rest, regardless of roads or the displacement situation.

The new Tesla are also updated its board computers, to be able to analyze and digest all sensor data entered into the system. According to Tesla itself, computing capacity has been multiplied by 40 from today.

All this is possible thanks to the new sensor. The eight optical sensors (cameras) provide 360-degree visibility around the vehicle at a distance of up to 250 meters. The information collected by these cameras is supplemented by data provided by 12 ultrasonic sensors to detect objects of different consistency over long distances.

To solve the problems of visibility in difficult weather conditions, one of the major current systems, Tesla incorporate a frontal radar that is able to see through heavy rain, fog, snow and clouds of dust.

All information provided by this set of sensors will be for a new computer that will be 40 times more powerful than current models installed in processed; the software that give meaning to all this, says Musk, will be ready in 2018, when he achieved what is called the level 5 of autonomy (which does not require any human interaction); today’s vehicles are at level 1 or 2 (the user can release the steering wheel or look away from the road for a while, but important management decisions remain the human driver).

Tesla said the Model S and Model X in production are already incorporating hardware, although teams will not be activated until the sensors are calibrated. This means that vehicles equipped with the new hardware initially lose some of the features of the current self-driving car system as emergency braking and active cruise control speed.